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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It absolutely proved that. But the idea that the fault lies with Clinton as a candidate is absolutely the wrong message to take away from it.
We've sent the message that all the GOP has to do to disqualify any Democratic candidate for President is to fling enough propaganda at the public. Is that really how we want our politics to work?
edited 5th Apr '18 11:20:51 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Slightly off topic, but has anyone else noticed how many refutted the Lesser of Two Evils argument during the election, only to then turn around and vote for a third party candidate (or anyone else really) solely on the basis that they were not part of the "establishment" or that they wouldn't be as bad to be head tilting?
Because people have their heads in the clouds. I guess they think that problem is "over there", and what happens "over there" won't affect them because...... I don't know
edited 5th Apr '18 11:26:04 AM by Kakuzan
Don't catch you slippin' now.I can’t speak for everyone in this thread but I think when people talk about Hillary’s baggage they’re talking about the smear campaign Republicans have been running against her since Bill’s presidency. The whole “vast right-wing conspiracy” thing. The argument is that even with a similar amount of 2016 interference a candidate that hadn’t been continuously denigrated for years would have had a better chance.
They should have sent a poet.![]()
I know some hardcore Libertarians who admit that Johnson may not have been an ideal candidate, but they supported him anyway because "the Party cannot fail, it can only be failed" (paraphrasing, of course). In other words, the same arguments they used against Clinton were meaningless when it came to their own party. The hypocrisy should have been obvious, but one of the easiest ways to mark a committed ideologue is their imperviousness to that accusation.
Like who? Any Democratic politician who's gained enough visibility on the national stage to be a decent presidential candidate has already been pre-smeared by the right-wing machine. Clinton was obviously the front-runner, but that's one of the things they're really good at doing over in Fox-land. Find qualified, rising stars on the left and build the groundwork to tear down their future candidacies.
Sanders didn't get hit precisely because the GOP knew him for what he was: a spoiler. They egged on his campaign and his supporters, knowing that he almost certainly wouldn't win the primary and that his campaign machinery could be turned on Clinton.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:29:48 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
![]()
That may be so...but it also just sends the message that once your opponents have lied about you enough we should disqualify you from running.
Moreover, I don't think that Sanders would have done any better, and if we're not talking about him running instead of her, then I'm not sure who critics of Clinton have in mind as their "easily could have beaten Trump candidate." I rather doubt it's Lincoln Chaffee or Martin O'Malley.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:29:01 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
I mean, you can make the argument that Biden could have done it (personally, I'm not totally sold on this, but I do see where they are coming from given his popularity in the states that put Trump over the top), but the people who attack Clinton see him as another "Establishment Shill(TM).
edited 5th Apr '18 11:30:38 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Apologies if this has been posted already, but to the surprise of absolutely no-one, climate change
denialism
is at an all-time high among Republicans.
This party is literally destroying the US both morally and intellectually.
The article from the Guardian does end on a more optimistic note and actually touches on something we've brought up here before:
People always ask me “how do you convince conservatives” or “how do you convince Trump voters” and I answer, “the question isn’t how to convince conservatives, it’s who should we be targeting - our audience is the large, undecided majority”
One key point from the Gallup polling data is that consistently over the past 20 years, less than 10% of Americans have believed that most scientists don’t think global warming is happening. The vast majority of Americans are either aware or unaware of the expert consensus, but few have it backwards. Data from Yale and George Mason universities tells a similar story – only about 10% of Americans think less than 50% of climate scientists agree on global warming. While Americans badly underestimate the expert consensus – just 13% are aware there’s over 90% expert agreement, and the average American thinks the consensus is just 67% – despite growing polarization, few believe that most scientists reject global warming.
Most Americans are simply unaware about and thus underestimate the expert climate consensus. While a number of people can’t be convinced by the facts due to their polarized views, many more in that undecided, uninformed group remain open-minded and reachable.
We could solve the problem if conservative politicians and media outlets would simply stop spreading misinformation about and polarizing the subject of climate change. Sadly, the rise of this ‘tribal epistemology’ has done lasting damage to America, and nobody seems to have any good ideas how to stop or reverse it. But the Consensus Handbook provides some important information about the importance of consensus messaging and tools to help it take hold.
Basically the trump die-hards and dyed-in-the-wool conservatives aren't the people who we should be trying to influence. Independents and undecideds are way easier to convince via information, and the republicans can't win on their own anyways.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:34:13 AM by Draghinazzo
Sanders deciding to run gave the worst elements on the left someone to rally around, and led to a revival of the "fight the Establishment" nonsense that's been poisoning leftist efforts to actually accomplish anything since 1968. It's not the only reason for Trump's victory, but it's a part of it, and any candidate who wasn't Sanders himself was going to have to deal with it.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:32:09 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
So, apparently, many Republicans think Paul Ryan is ready to be done with Washington.
Just something to get away from all of the things that have been said a million times already here.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:33:44 AM by LSBK
Unfortunately, the well of Trump sycophants among the House leadership runs pretty deep. Ryan may be a pathetic little bootlicker, but imagine someone like Devin Nunes holding the Speakership.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Fighteer: I don't think you can argue that the smearing of Clinton was much more extensive than any other potential democrat. They've been going after her for close to two decades now. That's not to say she shouldn't have run because I think she could have won if she played her cards a little differently, but I think it's worth acknowledging that on top of all the 2016 interference she came into the race with a mark against her.
Personally, I liked Clinton. She has a technocratic streak which appeals to me and she's capable when it comes to foreign policy. I'll admit that she had an uphill battle though.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:38:52 AM by archonspeaks
They should have sent a poet.
Yes. she had a mark against her. I acknowledge that. I just don't think we should accept it. Clinton winning would have sent the message that we're too smart for that kind of propaganda. Unfortunately, her losing sent the opposite message, and now we've got a track record of falling for it. You don't defeat the bully by giving him your lunch money.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:39:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Well, at least Cambridge Analytica's influence will be gone in the next election. That should sway things in the Democrats' favor a little. Plus, voters have seen Trump's failed policies in action now.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:53:58 AM by Grafite
Life is unfair...I don't think it's that unfair to recognize that Hillary had a very unfortunate disadvantage when it comes to being the victim of a prior, very long-running smear campaign in addition to whatever nonsense was going to plague her from the right-wing media, etc. We don't have to like it, but there was nothing we could have done to erase years of manufactured antipathy.
I would, however, like to point out that this is all very much a "hindsight is 20/20" thing. The race was pretty close and she only lost by a pretty thin margin in some key states. Would someone else have done better and beat Trump? I think it's plausible but we had no way of knowing how bad things would be at the time.
Well, it's a "learn from our mistakes" moment. Even with her past what really cost her the election was hostile outside influence, and I think with the exposure given to the media's ability to influence popular opinion and the role the internet plays in disseminating conspiracy theories we'll be more resistant to such things in the future.
We just have to make sure to cement those lessons as much as we can, hopefully in policy. Whether we could have predicted the amount of interference in the election is debatable but now we know and we can do something about it.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:49:16 AM by archonspeaks
They should have sent a poet.@Draghinazzo: That's what I mean. Clinton had all those outside factors, like russian bots, that any other democratic contender would have had to deal with, yes, but she was, in adition to those, also plagued by her own scandals and decades of smearing, which cost the victory.
Life is unfair...

Um, didn't this election prove just that? If you don't fight against sources of misinformation and lack of social media regulations, lies will convince enough people of easily dispelled falsehoods.
edited 5th Apr '18 11:23:31 AM by Grafite
Life is unfair...